The invention relates to channel-shaped sealing, guiding or finishing strips such as for sealing around door or window openings, for receiving and guiding window glass and for fitting onto edge flanges and the like, such structures being suitable, for example, for employment in vehicle body construction and being hereinafter referred to as channel-shaped sealing strips.
Channel-shaped sealing strips are known comprising metal cores or carriers covered with flexible (e.g. elastomeric) material. Such metal carriers may take the form of a plurality of U-shaped metal elements connected by metal connecting links.
It is known, and desirable, for such metal connecting links to be designed so as to give the metal carrier good flexibility to enable the finished structure to be readily bent round curves and corners. However, this flexibility may be disadvantageous during manufacture of the strip because it may make the strip liable to breakage (particularly before the carrier is covered with the flexible material) especially if it is subjected to longitudinal pull. Furthermore, such pull may undesirably stretch the structure.
An object of the invention is to provide a structure and a method of making such a structure which eliminate or mitigate these problems.